Moving to Rouen - anyone there?

[lottien]

Hi - I live in France already but I'm moving from the Paris area to Rouen in the summer (looking for better quality of life - change in career) and I don't know anyone there. DD is six so going in to CP - she 's pretty much bilingual so would love to meet English speaking kids.

Hi Lottien, I haven't come across any mners from Rouen area before. There are lots of English speaking families in the area though so you should meet some other bilingual children through other means.
Good luck with the move.

Hello - thanks for the reply and the encouraging words. I'm sure that we'll meet plenty of people once we get there and she starts school but as we'll be arriving in the summer I was hoping to arrange some play dates before la rentrée. Otherwise August is going to seem very looooong!

I see what you mean. My parents moved at the end of July when I was 7. I didn't meet any children my age until the week before school went back but I was crazy about dogs at the time so got to know all the retired people who walked their dogs past our house!

And you survived! I just think she's going to hate me for separating her from her friends. I have this feeling that I need to have created a new world for her before we get there to try to soften the blow of the move. Perhaps I just need to relax a bit and we'll deal with it together when we get there.

It was a rather long summer (and I was the sort of child that could spend a lot of time alone reading books).

If you can spare the time/finances just after the move, could you treat it as being on holiday at first? Go sightseeing and to the beach etc a couple of times a week. That might 'soften the blow'.

Or how about working together on doing up her room how she likes as a project while she has some spare time on her hands.

We're going to that area (76) for our holiday this summer, DH's aunt is putting up with us putting us up for a few days.

Hello,
I don't live in Rouen but nearer Le Havre. I'm sure there are quite a lot of mamans anglaises in Rouen though.

Do you know the magicmaman site? They have a local bit you could post on.

The kids are in the garden so I'd better not leave them too long - will be back later.

Hello, I haven't been on for ages so I hadn't seen these last replies but Im having a MN splurge this week (not much work getting done).

We've now found an appartment and the move is planned for first week of August. DD took the news really well (probably hasn't really understood the implications) and we are planning all the things we're going to do together when we're there(mainly involving her starting pony riding).

I've put a post on the magicmaman Haute Normandie site and had 0 replies!!! I might try again. There's a post of mamans in Rouen but they're all quite young (I'm 42) with babies.

I'll just have to be bold when I get there!